geert on Mon, 3 May 2004 17:12:57 +0200 (CEST) |
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[Nettime-nl] Invitation to The Wherehouse/Brussels |
From: shuddha@sarai.net This is to invite you to an opening of our latest work, The Wherehouse, in Brussels at the Palais de Beaux Art, and to share with you, some of the thoughts that we have been engaging in the process of our work on this project. The Wherehouse opens on the 6th of May, as part of the programme of 'Revolution/Restoration' curated by Barbara Vanderlinden and Dirk Snauwert, and we would be very happy if you could find the time to come and be with us for the opening, on Thursday, the 6th of May at 18 : 00 hrs (if you are in or near Brussels) or take time out to visit the installation during its stay at the Palais de Beaux Arts, (7.05. 2004 > 06.06.2004 ) The address of the venue is - PALAIS DES BEAUX-ARTS BRUXELLES (CENTRE FOR FINE ARTS, BRUSSELS) rue Ravenstein 23, 1000 Bruxelles info: 02 507.84.44 (nearest metro stop : Central Station/Gare Centrale/Centraal Station) To see an online rescension of the project, visit, www.the-wherehouse.net For more information on the show, see http://www.bozar.be/fr/wherehouse.html (in French) http://www.bozar.be/nl/wherehouse.html (in Dutch) Below is a brief note by us about the Wherehhouse. Looking forward to seeing you, and to hearing from you cheers Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula & Shuddhabrata Sengupta The Raqs Media Collective www.raqsmediacollective.net raqs@sarai.net --------------------------------------------------------- THE WHEREHOUSE Raqs Media Collective The Wherehouse is a constellation of images, objects and annotational possibilities designed to posit a speculative archaeology of/for the present moment.It constitutes an assemblage of reflections on time, memory, movement, stasis and location in a world where some people are forced to abandon home, and others can be seen as being imprisoned by their assumptions of stability about their present location. The constellation intends to raise questions about our moorings in the materiality of the world we inhabit, and our certitudes about our destinies. The work emerges from Raqs Media Collective's ongoing concerns with forms of legality and illegality in the contemporary world and a period of intense engagements in the course of focused workshops between Raqs Media Collective and the residents of detention centres for illegal aliens in Brussels, ex illegal aliens, and recent refugees in Frankfurt am Main and Hanau, as well as by a drive to collect material objects from the inhabitants, and streets, of Brussels. The first phase of the project took place in March in Frankfurt during a Raqs residency in Frankfurt at Das TAT, at the invitation of its artistic director Louise Neri, and involved engagements with refugees, ex aliensand migrants as well as activists working with them, and culminated in a 'reading performance for a listening room' at the TAT in collaboration with AndCompany&Co, a Frankfurt based association of independent theatre practitioners, performance artists, musicians and writers.The second phase of the project will be manifested in an installation that uses video, photography, printed books, a web site, sound and an assemblage of solicited/collected objects at the Palais de Beaux Arts as part of the 'Revolution-Restoration' programme curated by Barbara Vanderlinden and Dirk Snauwert. The process leading up to the installation is preceded by a 'Wherehouse' workshop at the Reception Centre for Immigrants and Asylum Seekers at the Petit Chateau in Brussels Refugees, exiles, asylum seekers, or any people who cross borders illegally, (without papers) leaving behind situations of deprivation and hardship often find themselves incarcerated in detention centres, where they await assimilation or deportation. They have no way of knowing whether or not their application for asylum and residence in the countrythey have come to will be accepted. They are imprisoned by the clock and exiled from the calendar. They have no way of knowing whether tomorrow, or next week, or next year, they will be put on a plane that flies them back to the war or the fear or the hunger that they sought to escape in the first place. When they leave home, they are often compelled to leave behind them most of what constitutes the material reality of their lives, carrying with them only that which is most essential, urgent or especially precious. The cities that such people (refugees, asylum seekers, exiles, border crossers) come to, are regarded by their legal inhabitants as stable spaces where nothing is going to change drastically. This notion of stability forecloses the possibility of seeing any space as vulnerable to the seismic upheavals of contemporary history. It assumes that the upheaval endemic to Kabul will never touch Brussels. The engagements that we (Raqs) make with the residents of detention centres centre on a body of images of material objects created and collected by us. These object-images may be suggestive, and are open to be read as provocations for memories or thoughts of the abandoned material universe left behind by a person who feels compelled to leave their home and journey to a distant country. The 'illegals'/migrants, or ex-illegals and residents of the detention centres are requested to annotate a book of photographs made by us containing images of quotidian objects of general use. These annotations are registered on to the website of the project in the form of a database of narratives linked to images. These registrations are made by us, and can also be made by anyone who wants to inscribe thier thoughts on to the website directly. The annotated notebooks and web pages constitute one node of the work. Simultaneously, the project envisages inviting people from the city of Brussels located between the Petit Chateau and the Palais des Beaux Arts. These people will be individually asked to donate a single object that they no longer use, or are willing to discard, to the project. The process also involves collecting objects abandoned on the streets of Brussles. These objects, which may range from furnitures to notebooks to matchboxes, to implements , will be arrayed in a grid with tags speculating as to their provenance (their previous custodian) as if in an archaeological site following a dig. The two sets of objects (and the annotations accompanying them), with their two trajectories of provenance, will intersect in the work (A 'Warehouse' of objects that can be seen as responding to a question about 'Where' something or someone is coming from - hence a 'Wherehouse') and be offset by projections and layers of imagery taken from the outer walls of detention centres, more specifically, the 'Petit Chateau' in Brussels. The outer wall of the detention centre, inscribed with layers of names of inmates will then be transposed on to the work as if to constitute an image of the inner wall of a city. In these ways, the Wherehouse seeks to engender a reflection on the circumstances in which time thickens to an eternal present, and space is folded inside out. Where the outer wall of a detention centre is the inner wall of a city and when due to circumstances beyond their control, those who ventured out (crossing borders) are cloistered and the plans that they made for the future rendered futile by the casual and catastrophic perambulations of our times. A time for instance, when an entity called Europe, expands it borders even as it raises its walls, contracts, closes in on itself. By locating itself within Brussels, a city at the epicentre of these upheavals, and within the discourse generating apparatus of contemporary art The Wherehouse, seeks to provoke an encounter between abandoned materials and abandoned memories - with a view to the asking of questions, to the telling of (and listening to) stories; to the sharing of histories and to the necessary labours of memory and reflection - on realities that are often wished away. Credits Concept, Process and Installation : Raqs Media Collective Photography: Monica Narula Print and Website Design: Mrityunjay Chatterjee Website Coding: T. Meyarivan Sound/Music: Sascha Sulimma (AndCompany&Co) Acknowledgments: Barbara Vanderlinden, Dirk Snauwert, Louise Neri, AndCompany&Co, Hagen Kopp Fedasil, Brussels Das TAT, Frankfurt Migrants, Refugees, Asylum Seekers and People without Papers in Frankfur, Hanau and Brussels who participated in the project, and many of whom would not like to be named. The residents of Brussels
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